Reading comprehension is a fundamental skill for nearly all aspects of education and life. Many teachers are finding their students are overwhelmed when faced with large bodies of text. Teaching them how to markup text is a great tool to further their comprehension skills.
Text markups help students to:
- Understand what a passage or story says
- Stay active and alert while reading
- Recall important points through visualization
- Develop advanced reading strategies like predicting, summarizing, and making connections
Here are 3 easy steps to follow when teaching text markup strategies.
1. Identify Main Topics
Teach students to break down the text into smaller topics. Show them how subheadings are an excellent guide to what the main topics are. Then encourage them to look for the sentences that directly relate to each subheading. As they identify these main topics within the text, have them draw a box around that area and label it with a corresponding topic number.
2. Label Key Details
Once the student has identified the main topics, they can now go through each box of text and circle or highlight key terms, dates, and facts. Depending on the reading, they can also underline the author’s claims regarding those key details.
3. Write Notes
Having your student handwrite notes on the specific areas that emphasize the main topics will help them process and retain the material better. If they are unsure what to write, simply copying the highlighted phrases is a great starting point.
Teaching your students to markup text into smaller topics will help them not be overwhelmed by larger reading assignments and you will see a marked improvement in their reading comprehension abilities. For more teaching suggestions reach out to us at Top Score Writing today and follow along with our Teacher Tip Tuesday posts on social media.
